A stream crosses the sky: a stream of souls, of waters, of the dead, of subtle substance. It is the Milky Way. It runs from one end of the sky to the other, then flows on upon the earth. Earth and sky are the two banks of one great river, and it would be hard indeed to find the place where that river passes from the celestial to the terrestial bank. Where is the meeting point? Where do the celestial waters plunge down to earth, with their tremendous mass, where do they carve out their bed? Such is the disparity of force, between heaven and earth, that it is perilous, rash, to pass directly from one to the other. The flow of the Milky Way headed down to where a mighty corrugation lifted earth to sky. It was the Himālaya. Thus, flowing down from the mountaintops, the Milky Way became Gangā, Śiva’s lover, and daughter of the king-mountain Himavat. But if left to themselves, those waters would have flooded the earth. To avoid overwhelming life irremediably, the celestial stream came down on Śiva’s head where he sat motionless, deep in tapas. The impact shattered the mass of water, which then came on down to earth in a thousand small streams. That was Gangā’s body, forever twisting around her lover’s head, streaming over his lips, pouring from his jet black tresses. When Śiva wore his turban, the waters hid among the folds, bridesmaids to their amorous play, then spilled over. Life on earth is possible because Gańgā’s body breaks unceasingly over Siva’s. Śiva can be “Propitious,” as his name would have it, only so long as Gangā’s cataract plunges constantly down upon his head, only so long as his secret, ever-exposed lover dribbles down his thin tresses, the way water drips down on the stone liṅga from a jug hanging above. The dry sign of algebraic equivalence must ever be drenched in the tongue’s lymph, just as coitus means swimming toward the recognition of those waters from which Word, Vāc, emerged.
Śiva and Gaṅgā were the first example of a perennial love, renewed at every instant by a stream that knows no end. But the beginning was rather different, closer to hate and war. Looking down from the height of what would one day be called the Milky Way at the bluish mass of Śiva’s head, where she had been told she would have to shatter herself before touching ground, Gangā thought: “I’ll sweep him away like a straw.” In the end. what did a god mean to her?
Amid her waves the gods surfaced, then hid again. It was true of Agni, true of Soma. And likewise of Sūrya, Sun, every single night. They were a dazzle, a heat made manifest in her from time to time. But without her waters they would never have existed. That motionless figure on the ground, that taciturn god who was perhaps trying to look like a tree trunk, would be just one among many.
Gangā plunged with a crash onto Śiva’s head. She was impatient to touch the ground, to taste this new flavor. She wouldn’t even see Śiva’s face, she thought, unless already swept off on billowing waters, far away. But no sooner had she brushed against that head than Gangā felt lost. Śiva’s hair was a forest. And what was a forest? Her waters were constantly being diverted, divided, humiliated in tiny streams. They settled in huge lakes, surrounded by a thick darkness that was no longer the darkness of the sky. Huge, angry waves kept beating down on Śiva. And Śiva had gathered himself in one spot. From there, like silk from a spider, his māyā spun out, the sticky enchantment of his mind. Śiva held back the waters, wound around she who winds around all, multiplied the meanders that would soak her up. Like a spoiled princess used to having her every whim obeyed, Gangā pounded down upon him, loathed him. “I’ll never see the earth if I go on wandering about in this stupid, frightening forest,” she thought. Gangā didn’t know it, but her fury enhanced her splendor. Streaming down Śiva’s hair, she saw a corner of the god’s mouth lift, in a hint of a smile. That made her even madder. As she renewed her attack, boiling in obscure little ditches, a few drops of foam spurted out beyond the forest. For a moment they found themselves suspended in the void, astonished. Finally they tasted a sharp, dry flavor. It was the earth. Those drops formed Lake Bindusaras, the Lake of Drops. From there they flowed into a bed that seemed to have been made for them. Men called that river Gangā.
For thousands of days Śiva was united to Pārvatī, and that contact transmitted a tremor to the earth. Their bodies were twined together, but all at once Śiva noticed that Pārvatī was cold, as if she were rejecting tapas. Her fire concentrated in a single point: her eyes, which were no longer staring into Śiva’s eyes, but at his tresses. In the dripping dampness of his hair, she had recognized her elder sister, Gangā, still clinging to Śiva’s body. Every drop bespoke the delicate swaying of her generous hips. And the corners of her mouth upturned in a constant complicity of pleasure and mockery. Pārvatī thought: “So all the time Siva has had me wrapped in his serpentine embraces, he was still carrying Gangā on his head, still dripping with her body. How will I ever be able to show forth Devī, the Goddess who belongs to Śiva’s body, who is his body, how will I ever be able to immerse myself in pleasure if I’m forever meeting Gangā’s eyes, as when we played together as children, if Gangā’s eyes are forever telling me that she is immersed in a pleasure perhaps even greater than my own? So, while for years on end Śiva’s body has been glued to mine, at the same time I have been witnessing another of Śiva’s loves, which began before mine and is still going on, wrinkling his forehead and pouring down his tresses. How naive I was to think those signs were due to the heights of our pleasure…” Pārvatī was shot through by an overwhelming jealousy and anger. What did it mean, now, to have practiced tapas so long, for no other reason than to attract the god? What did it mean to have schemed with her father to distract the god’s mind and have it wander all over her body? What did it mean, if the truth was that Śiva’s head was still streaming with her sister, the loathsome Gaṅgā? Pārvatī turned her eyes on Śiva and said in icy rage: “You play with my body, but your head is still playing with Gaṅgā.” With a sudden animal move that made the mountain quake, Pārvatī wrenched herself free from Śiva’s embrace. Then she turned to the river Gaṅgā and cursed it: “May your waters be forever impure.” The god gazed at Pārvatī and thought that he had never seen her look so beautiful, as when they played dice and Pārvatī cheated. Then she would laugh, with a trill that concealed a similar and opposite fury.
When Śiva wiped out the world, all combinations of existence would flow within him, without needing to exist. The mind and the outside were not separate entities — perhaps not even entities at all. Penetrating each other, they lost all their shyness. The stream was one. The dreadful and the delicate surfaced together, in pairs, indifferent to each other, like distant relatives. Then they bid each other goodbye. Immediately something else took their place. An incessant migration. All forms, all forces: they were Śiva’s herd. That’s why they called him Paśupati, Lord of the Herds.
“For Śiva excess is the norm. An everlasting turbulence. None of his states can guarantee the earth peace and quiet,” thought the thirty-three gods, perplexed. If Śiva practices tapas and ignores the world, then creation grows dull, loses its fragrance, like a woman dressing up for a lover who doesn’t notice. If, together with the Goddess, or with a woman, he indulges in the game of pleasure, then it goes on for months and years, until the constant, exasperated contact between their bodies, its never-ending friction, infects the world like a fever and threatens to burn it all up. So the gods came to the conclusion that, however Śiva manifested himself, at some point or other he should be diverted, disturbed, interrupted, so that life might run its course, mediocre though that might be. They knew that Śiva was he who brings imbalance — and that even though it could never vibrate without him, the world could absorb only a tiny fraction of his turmoil. The only conceivable balance would be a sum of imbalances, all of them originating in Śiva.